Sweet Sixteen - Happy Birthday LouLouLand, And Life Lately

It wouldn't be a birthday in the UK without a caterpillar cake, and whilst it's not my birthday, my baby aka my blog celebrates it's 16th birthday today eeek. When I clicked publish on that first post, I never thought that I would outlast so many of my favourite blogs, and still be churning out posts (all be it sporadically!) 16 years later, and what a 16 years it's been!

So much has changed in that time, not only in my own life but also in the worlds of fashion, beauty and of course social media. Blogging to be honest now is a bit passe, people, advertisers and brands, now seem to want faster, simpler content like Instagram and Tik Tok which I can completely understand, but whilst I do dabble in other mediums (check out the links in my sidebar), blogging is the place where I feel really at home, using all be it rambling words to express my feelings, views and frustrations, as I muddle through life. 

I'm not going to lie the last few years have been rough not only personally but also blogging wise. Although I am partially to blame, lack of engagement and lack of progression has all made me wonder if it's all worth while, but I still love writing and creating content, and blogging gives me an outlet and a place I can escape to when life gets a little bit too much. Not only that but my stats show that there are still some of you out there that continue to read my blog even when I haven't posted for an age, which is still pretty amazing to me and I really can't thank you enough.

So I guess the gist of this is that I'm not going away anytime soon, I'm trying not to look too far into the future (one of my very bad habits!) instead focusing more on the here and now, and despite several blips at the start of this year, LouLouLand will continue into 2023 and hopefully beyond that.

This year has had a slightly delayed start because, and yes this is the main reason, my mam ordered me a new bed as part of my Christmas present. My old one as you can see was well past it's best, and it was starting to interfere with my sleep, and my pain levels, so I asked for something practical from Santa. We managed to get a really good price on one in the after Christmas sales but we couldn't get it delivered till the end of January - annoying but on reflection it was the best thing that could have happened. My room had to basically be gutted, to get the old bed out and the new one in, and believe me it was hard work, especially for two people with chronic illness but the room was cleared, the bed base was removed and yes I ended up sleeping on a pretty wrecked mattress on the floor for about a week which did nothing for my back.

Eventually we got both the mattress and the bed frame outside for council collection, the new one arrived, and thankfully the fabulous delivery guys took it upstairs for us so it just needed minimal assembly, and voila, new Orla Kiely bedding, and a new duvet, and already my sleep had improved at least 90%, and my back feels less achey when I wake up - result!

Getting the bed back in was the main thing, but we're still unpacking boxes and try to find homes for all the shoe boxes that were under my bed, the furniture is all back in now but since I've decided to go through my belongings with a charity bag in hand as I'm bringing things back in, I've still got quite a way to go before every is back in and in it's correct place - arghhhhh! why is nothing in my world ever simple?

There is no question that I've been doing too much physical stuff so I'm seriously lacking in spoons at the moment hence I haven't really had the energy to do much of anything else, including blogging. That been said I do actually have a couple of posts that are just about ready to go up, so you'll hopefully see both of those next week and I can actually start 2023 properly.

I have no idea in all honesty what direction the blog is really going to go in this year but I'm going to try and live a bit more in the moment and post about what I want, when I want. I have lots of ideas flying around in my head about things that I want to do but as per usual it's about putting them into practise x So Happy Sweet Sixteen LouLouLand, it's been a journey and thanks to your support, and my own bloody mindedness, it's not over yet x